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Police Commissioner defends access to Opal card records

Police Commissioner defends access to Opal card records:

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione has defended police being given powers to access Opal card records as a crucial tool to ensure the “safety and security of the community”.

The police chief’s defence came as a complaint was lodged with the state’s privacy commissioner about law enforcement agencies being able to track hundreds of thousands of commuters without a warrant.

Significantly, it isn’t just the police who could access Opal card data. It’s anyone defined with law enforcement powers which, in Australia, includes over 100 different groups. That this kind of data can be accessed without warrant – data that can reveal roughly where people live, work, the kinds of places they visit, people they commonly travel with – is absolutely absurd.

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Police and bylaw enforcement may be tracking your licence plate for parking data

Police and bylaw enforcement may be tracking your licence plate for parking data:

Calgary resident Linda McKay-Panos doesn’t venture downtown often, but a city database knows where and when she parked her car during 10 visits over the past four years.

Each day, parking enforcement officers drive the city’s streets in cars equipped with cameras designed to scan licence plates and identify parking scofflaws. Even if no violation has been committed, the city still holds on to data showing the time and location the vehicle was spotted, as well as a photo of the vehicle.

As use of licence-plate scanning technology grows in Canada among bylaw enforcement agencies and police departments there is no consistency as to how long such data is retained or who it’s shared with.

…

The technology is becoming a “mass surveillance” tool and demands better oversight, said Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab specializing in technology and privacy issues.

“It doesn’t matter that there are positive intentions behind this. It’s a surveillance system,” he said.

…

Even if police have a reason to sift through the stored data, the fact that the data consists of plate information belonging to people who are innocent of wrongdoing is troublesome, Parsons said.

“I don’t think people go around their daily lives with the expectation that my movements are going to be monitored because at some point in the future I may be of interest to the police.”

The whole article is important, and worth the read, and discloses the massive variance in how vehicular surveillance is happening across Canada.

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Emergency surveillance bill clears Commons

Emergency surveillance bill clears Commons:

Data retention and investigatory powers bill is agreed after angry exchanges alleging an abuse of parliament

This ‘emergency’ follows the European Court of of Justice finding that mass data retention laws in Europe are illegal. In response, the UK government is passing a localized data retention and surveillance bill.

Significantly, the government has stated that:

The government has insisted the ruling throws into doubt existing regulations, meaning communications companies could begin deleting vital data. Ministers claim the bill only reinforces the status quo and does not create new powers.

At issue is that the existing status quo has been deemed illegal. And yet, in response, Parliament has decided to pass more – still illegal – legislation. And so civil liberties groups will bring this into court, spend years fighting, only to have the legislation overturned. And after which, government will likely pass similar, still illegal, legislation. And the wheel of politics will turn on and on and on…

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Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia

Political Staffers Tried to Delete the Senate Scandal (and Other Bad Behaviour) from Wikipedia:

VICE Exclusive: Canadian political staffers are using their work time to delete large sections of Wikipedia articles in order to remove controversies, misinformation, and unpleasant truths.

Surprising? No. Sad? Kinda. Reason to ban House of Commons IP addresses from editing Wikipedia? Almost certainly.

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Links Quotations

2014.7.14

The tax increase comes as airlines face increased volatility in jet-fuel prices because of the crisis in Iraq, and as they continue to adjust to the decline in the value of the Canadian dollar, which has also hit airlines because the price of fuel is measured in U.S. dollars.

Greg Keenan, “Airlines to fight ‘unbelievably punitive’ Ontario fuel tax”

Setting aside whether it’s even a good idea to raise this particular tax – I have some doubts – if you replaced ‘decline’ with ‘increase’ in the quotation it would mirror previous complaints from airlines about raising taxes in the 90s through to today.

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Two Ridiculous Headphones and a Pile of Schiit

Marco has a good piece that analyses the relative value of über-high-end headphones over just-high-end sets. He reaches the unsurprising conclusion that just-high-end is enough for most people. And, in what might surprise some people, that the most technically precise sets aren’t necessarily what you want to spend your money on.

Based on my own purchases of headphones and earphones over the past 5-7 years I definitely tend to agree with him: technically neutral can be super dull to listen to though, at the same time, overly unbalanced sound profiles just destroy the songs and sounds that people pipe into their ears.

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Crypto certificates impersonating Google and Yahoo pose threat to Windows users

Crypto certificates impersonating Google and Yahoo pose threat to Windows users:

OS currently has no reliable way to detect bogus credentials released into the wild.

Yet another reason why (a) the certificate authority system is broken; (b) Microsoft is stuck trying to fix problems that it (partially) brings upon itself; © Chrome is arguably the most secure – if not privacy protective – of the major Web browsers.

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Voices from the frontlines of censorship: Andrei Soldatov:

Basically, the Russian approach is all about instigating self-censorship. To do this, you need to draft the legislation as broad as possible, to have the restrictions constantly expanded – like the recent law which requires bloggers with more than 3.000 followers to be registered – and companies, internet service providers, NGOs and media will rush to you to be consulted and told what’s allowed. You should also show that you don’t hesitate to block entire services like YouTube – and companies will come to you suggesting technical solutions, as happened with DPI (deep packet inspection). It helps the government to shift the task of developing a technical solution to business, as well as costs.

You also need to encourage pro-government activists to attack the most vocal critics, to launch websites with list of so-called national traitors, and then to have Vladimir Putin himself to use this very term in a speech.

All that sends a very strong message. And as a result, journalists will be fired for critical reporting from Ukraine by media owners, not by the government; the largest internet companies will seek private meetings with Putin, and users of social networks will become more cautious in their comments.

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Privacy and surveillance: Eight things every Canadian should know

Last night CJFE hosted a panel discussion, “Should Surveillance Scare You?” at the NOW Lounge in Toronto.

The event, moderated by Toronto Star National Security Reporter Michelle Shephard, featured Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the Munk School’s Citizen Lab, in conversation with Wesley Wark, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. The panelists lent their voices and views to the emerging debate over issues of surveillance, intelligence, and national security in a Canadian context.

Below are eight key takeaways from the conversation, which addressed everything from why Canadians should care about surveillance to what you can do to protect yourself online.

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This App Helps Reveal What Personal Data Is Stored by Canadian ISPs

This App Helps Reveal What Personal Data Is Stored by Canadian ISPs:

To find out what people could expect to learn by using the Access My Info tool, I spoke to one of the main people behind it: Chris Parsons, a post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.

“The privacy tool should let individuals know what information is being collected, and what’s being stored,” he said. “Additionally, telecoms’ responses should be informative if somebody wants to ask ‘have you exposed my information to government or another entity.”

Parsons and the team plan to crowdsource the replies that telecoms provide to users to gain a much better understanding of just what’s being held onto by service providers. Presently, it’s not exactly clear if ISPs track the sites we visit, or how long our mobile phone texts are stored.

Will the tool let users know if their data has been handed over to the police without a warrant? “Maybe,” said Parsons. “Companies would have to ask police before letting us know, so as not to jeopardize any ongoing investigations.” The same goes for finding out which agencies have had access to our information.

In any case, Parsons said, finding out what information could potentially be shared with authorities is the first giant step towards an informed discussion about privacy in Canada.

“This is our information, and we have a right to understand how it’s being managed. It’s not clear from the companies how they’re doing it. They don’t tell us,” he told me.

Parsons made it clear that the way the Access My Info tool works is very simple. It’s really just using existing legal powers available to citizens and bringing them into the digital world. The Citizen Lab had already released a template letter for doing the same thing, but the tool makes it even easier auto-fill request forms.

Moreover, Access My Info is based on an open platform. As a result, it can be reconfigured to send the same kinds of legal requests for information to all kinds of companies: credit card companies, banks, stores, or even car companies.

Parsons pointed to the example of OnStar, General Motors’ in-car service. Because it tracks the car’s location and other data, OnStar has proved a valuable resource for law enforcement. Thanks to this new tool, Canadians could soon be petitioning GM to find out how long their location data is stored.